BOOK REVIEW: WHEN THE NIGHT BELLS RING BY JO KAPLAN

27/7/2022

I soon found myself consuming page after page of compelling narrative of likeable characters and horrific circumstance.

When The Night Bells Ring by Jo Kaplan

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CamCat Publishing, LLC (11 Oct. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0744306116
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0744306118

A Book Review by Astrid Addams

As I’m sure you already know, there are some books that are ok, others are good or even very good, and some you consume like a shark in a literary feeding frenzy because you have to know what happens next or you are just compelled to keep going. I found When The Night Bells Ring on my ebook reader whilst I was on holiday and guessed that it came from my review list which I’d left at home. I soon found myself consuming page after page of compelling narrative of likeable characters and horrific circumstance.

The novel starts with two women travelling across the desert as Earth is being consumed by catastrophic climate change. In search of water, the women find an abandoned ghost town with an equally abandoned mine. Unsurprisingly for a horror book, they end up trapped only to discover that they are not alone. They discover a diary from the 1860’s in one of the rooms which contains the gripping narrative of a woman who travelled across the desert to the silver mine to escape her husbands fraud, so that he could make their fortune. It is a very feminist narrative, the main character are all women who are richly rounded, complex and feel like they are real. They make relatable mistakes and form relationships based on mutual need. There are also rare droplets of humour which I cherish like water and blood is cherished in the narrative. Yes, the diary is intertwined with grizzly murders, where people are drained of blood and the town is supposedly cursed, ever since something was released from digging too deep into the depths of the silver mine.

From the beginning until the grizzly but oddly touching end, a number of themes have ran through the novel. People are the real monsters through both narratives with their greed, brutality and over consumption. Thirst runs through both narratives as does the need for human relationships, particularly between women. Also the willingness to do whatever it takes to survive, or save your loved one knits the narratives together.

Seriously guys, get this book because it is amazing and I hope you love it as much as I did.

When the Night Bells Ring
by Jo Kaplan

Don't awaken what sleeps in the dark.

In a future ravaged by fire and drought, two climate refugees ride their motorcycles across the wasteland of the western US, and stumble upon an old silver mine. Descending into the cool darkness of the caved-in tunnels in desperate search of water, the two women find Lavinia Cain's diary, a settler in search of prosperity who brought her family to Nevada in the late 1860s.

But Lavinia and the settlers of the Western town discovered something monstrous that dwells in the depths of the mine, something that does not want greedy prospectors disturbing the earth. Whispers of curses and phantom figures haunt the diary, and now, over 150 years later, trapped and injured in the abandoned mine, the women discover they're not alone . . . with no easy way out.

The monsters are still here--and they're thirsty.